AGENTS OF INNOVATIONhttp://agentsofinnovation.org
A Podcast Featuring Entrepreneurs, Philanthropists, and Artists
Wed, 20 Mar 2019 15:43:12 +0000 en-US
hourly
1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.1.1http://agentsofinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cropped-Screen-Shot-2018-01-07-at-12.22.35-PM-1-32x32.pngAGENTS OF INNOVATIONhttp://agentsofinnovation.org
3232John Evans Rewrites The Takeawayhttp://agentsofinnovation.org/john-evans-rewrites-the-takeaway/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/john-evans-rewrites-the-takeaway/#respondWed, 20 Mar 2019 01:54:14 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4331John Evans is an executive director for a consulting unit in a global investment firm and the author of four books. His new book is The Takeaway: A Raucous Tale About the Art of the Sale. He was our guest on Episode 56 of the Agents of Innovation podcast, which can be heard on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or SoundCloud.

Raised in Winter Park, Florida, John acquired an undergraduate degree at the University of Florida, an MBA at the University of Miami, and a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership at Pepperdine University. He also is one of the millions of poor saps who has endured countless hours of horrible sales training.

Today, he works to counter those horrible sales trainings and help sales people all over the world “make meaning with clients.”

“I am a positive organizational scholar,” said Evans. “What
I’m interested in is helping organizations and teams really ascend, create
positive energy … I mean in a very measurable, empirically based fashion, where
we see a team hitting on all units … in this day and age, that is a competitive
advantage because we are selling, we are persuading, we are trying to win over
an extremely commoditized world.”

In his professional role, John primarily works with financial
advisors, financial planners, and investment managers. He helps them set themselves
apart in a sea of saneness. Through that work and through his four books he
teaches people how to “systematically go beyond the business at hand for the
pursuit of making meaning with clients.”

“We are here on planet earth to persuade well,” said Evans. “Every
great person – man or woman – persuaded well in his or her career. I’m saying
let’s figure out how to do this more efficaciously because we’re not given a
lot of instruction on it.”

John teaches clients and readers to perfect what he calls “the
art of WOW.” When you’re earnest about delivering a WOW experience – about making
meaning for someone in a sincere and authentic way – that person is going to
find a way to help you back.

“It’s called the law of reciprocity. I want especially your young entrepreneurs to really understand and unleash the power of the law of reciprocity,” said Evans, as he stresses, that above all, “sincerity is central.”

In his new book, The Takeaway, John uses the art of storytelling to help readers better make their case to their customers. In the story, we encounter the characters of Nick and Owen, two top sales agents for an Orlando-based timeshare company. Nick is going the traditional way sales people are taught – which is essentially to manipulate a customer to buy a product and to make the close as quickly as possible, thus dominating the customer into making a down payment in order to obtain their business. At first, Owen can’t keep up with Nick “make it rain” Fontaigne’s success with his aggressive sales tactics. That is, until Owen meets a consultant who teaches him a new way to form relationships with potential customers and perfect the art of the sale. He learns the art of WOW and how to create “moments of meaning-making” (MOMM). For Owen, and for his future customers, this new way of perfecting the art of the sale is transformative.

“All this stuff in my book really happened,” said Evans, who as a young adult was a time share salesman in Las Vegas, until he became disgusted with the way his employer wanted him to treat customers.

“This book is about authentic salesmanship, keeping it real,
it’s about purity of purpose – because when you have that, when you line it up,
things get really powerful and things get nuclear really quickly,” said Evans.

“You’re going to hear some great information in the book about how to manage stress well … when we focus on our ultimate mission, when we get clarity on why we do what we do, and we’re putting rituals in place to keep us in line with that ultimate mission – we actually relieve stress in the mental and emotional dimensions.”

John warns about the tactics taken by the Nick Fontaigne
character in his book. “When you dupe someone, when you’re the charlatan,
resentment is coming about and resentment is the worst thing for a brand because
it’s so hard to undo.”

On the other hand, MOMM – Moments of Meaning Making – “helps you solidify with existing clients, it helps you replicate your best clients, and make a better culture.” He stresses that good sales people in any industry must have “purpose beyond self.”

“We have to go beyond the business at hand on a regular
basis to make meaning with clients – if we are earnest about improving our
culture,” said Evans.

John Evans also focuses in on “interpersonal creativity – finding
ways to connect to make meaning like nobody else can. It’s got to be sincere
and there’s got to be surprise. This will grow your business or your enterprise
with tremendous velocity.”

He also recommends teams find a Chief Experience Officer (or
a “WOW Czar”). “What matters is we empower this person – and he or she has
really good emotional intelligence; they are tremendous listeners.”

No matter what we do, “we all have unique abilities to WOW,” said Evans. And that’s the takeaway from John’s lessons to sales people everywhere. He has written a new script for the art of the sale in the twenty-first century. And you can get your copy of The Takeaway on Amazon.com, where it has already been featured as the #1 book for non-formal business education. You can also listen in to our full interview with John Evans on Episode 56 of the Agents of Innovation podcast. You can also follow the podcast on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. We welcome your comments below!

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/john-evans-rewrites-the-takeaway/feed/0Andrew Leahey Takes Life by the Airwaveshttp://agentsofinnovation.org/andrewleahey/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/andrewleahey/#respondWed, 06 Mar 2019 03:37:05 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4316Andrew Leahey & The Homestead just released their newest album, Airwaves, on March 1, 2019. It’s an album that celebrates the anthem of rock and roll. It’s the kind of rock and roll Leahey grew up listening to on the airwaves in the 1980s and 1990s – hence the name of their new album and title track, “Airwaves.”

On Episode 55
of the Agents of Innovation podcast, Leahey recalled “growing up at a time when
I think just casual FM radio was really, really good – at least for a person of
my tastes,” said Leahey. “It was a lot of rock and roll music – it was a lot of
really big-sounding rock and roll music. So this album is us getting back to
that.”

Leahey says
his style of music “feels good to play… getting back to where I began not as a
musician but just as a music fan.”

When he was growing up, radio “was the greatest educator in terms of music,” said Leahey. “My earliest memories of listening to the radio are right before grunge really hit. Back then, you could listen to whatever local FM pop music station there was and you could still hear rock and roll on it. So I heard Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp and Bob Seger.”

“That kind of
music – it just kind of created the bedrock of what feels natural for me to
hear. That’s kind of my musical home base. The new album [Airwaves] scratches that itch to get back to that,” said Leahey.

And that’s what the title track belts out with its sound and with lyrics like: “Where’s all that heartbreak headed? I used to hear it on the Airwaves.”

“The tune
itself – Airwaves – it kind of pays tribute to the radio and to growing up
listening to that,” said Leahey. “It’s also a rallying cry to bands like myself
and our contemporaries – it’s like a reminder that people are listening … I
think it’s good for bands to remember that; that people are listening, that
people are letting their worldview take shape and we need to make a thing
that’s worthy of that because otherwise, why are we doing this?”

Leahey’s path to being a lead guitarist and lead songwriter for a rock band with a big sound wasn’t a direct one. Andrew grew up in Richmond, Virginia. His mother was a classical vocalist – and a pretty good one. She was frequently hired to sing at weddings, funerals, and church services. And she left her mark on Andrew and his brother when she had them take vocal lessons at a young age.

Through
middle, high school, and college, Andrew did a lot of academic-minded classical
music as a vocalist. He performed in choirs and chamber choirs. He attended the
University of Virginia in Charlottesville and then found his way to New York
City, where he spent two years performing with a choir at Julliard – which gave
him and his choir an opportunity to perform at many places including Carnegie
Hall, reaching some of the heights of vocal music performance.

“It took me
climbing up that ladder and getting fairly high on it and looking around to
realize it wasn’t exactly what I wanted,” said Leahey. From a young age, he was
interested in music, and when his mother told him he needed to consider a
backup career, he told her planned on being a music journalist. We aren’t quite
sure that’s what she had in mind.

In his mid-20s, he moved out to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he also got married. From there, he took a job at AllMusic.com – as their pop editor for four years. He also wrote columns and reviews for Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Spin, Paste, The Bluegrass Situation, and The Washington Times. For him, it was a great crash course in music history – looking at artists he liked and what their influences were – and it really helped with his writing. He continues to write for some of these sources today, most often with an alias, so that readers are not confused by Andrew Leahey the musician and Andrew Leahey the music journalist.

But writing
about music wasn’t enough. He had the itch to play and perform and he and his
wife considered moving to many places where he could do just that. “I wanted to
go to a town that would really kick my butt and just really light a fire –
light a nuclear blast under me.”

He considered
options like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, but he ended up choosing
Nashville, where he has now lived for eight years. Well, kind of. Andrew’s wife
is enrolled in veterinary school at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville,
which is nearly three hours from Nashville. So, Andrew splits his time between
the two cities. Therefore, even when he and his band are not touring, he’s
always on the road during this season of his life.

After arriving in Nashville, Andrew really beefed up on his guitar skills and worked his way towards becoming a lead guitarist for Elizabeth Cook, Rodney Crowell, McKayla Ann, Jamie Kent, John Latham, Will Hoge, Drew Holcomb, and others. His main gig with alt-country artist Elizabeth Cook has even given him opportunities to play at the Ryman Auditorium and the Grand Ole Opry.

Andrew is
also the lead singer and lead guitarist for his own band. “Now that I’m the
lead guitarist, the guitar riffs are always going to come from me, the writing
clearly comes from me. I’m the lead
singer as well. It helps strengthen the identity of what Andrew Leahey &
The Homestead actually is.”

Even with the
establishment of that rock and roll identity, Rolling Stone magazine recently put him in the category of the “Top
10 Country Artists You Need to Know.” However, they did say that his
music is “for fans of Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and Ryan Adams.”

“It’s been
interesting to me the confusion or the muddiness of what kind of music we
play,” said Leahey. “To me, it’s clear rock and roll. It’s not classic rock,
but it’s a classic approach to rock and roll.”

“Part of our
identity and part of what we’re also trying to get people to rally behind … is
this idea that we’re big fans of this kind of music, of this time period when
this music was king … that’s part of what this new album’s identity is,” said
Leahey.

But how does a band like his find an identity in American pop culture when there are seemingly infinite ways of getting music – not from the radio airwaves – but digitally through Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, and other streaming services?

“As a
musician …it’s hard to be raised at the time when we were raised, when there
was one kind of clearer way of how bands came up through the ranks and then
when it actually becomes your turn, those rules have all changed. But I’m
coming around to making peace with it.”

In some ways,
he is cutting through the clutter. Rolling
Stone wrote that his “upcoming
LP, Airwaves, is a celebratory mix of sharp storytelling and
fist-pumping rock & roll swagger,” and they named the title track their
“song of the day” in early February.

But life has
also thrown Andrew Leahey some curve balls. In 2014, he was diagnosed with a
brain tumor – which grew on his hearing nerve. It threatened not only his life,
but his hearing in his right ear, and his balance. The doctors told him there
was a 50% chance he would lose hearing in his right ear, due to the surgery.
For a musician and music journalist, that would also be career-threatening.
“It’s precious real estate in there,” said Leahey.

After a long
operation and long recovery, the tumor was removed, his life was saved, and his
hearing wasn’t damaged. In fact, even though half of his head was shaved for
the surgery, his long rock and roll hair grew back. “I was just really, really
pumped to be ok and to get my life back on track.”

Now he meets many fans who have gone through similar life-threatening situations who can relate to him and his story. “It moves me in a way that I can’t even articulate when a person comes up to me after a gig and they’ve gone through what I’ve gone through as well. That’s incredible,” said Leahey. And even for those who have not had a tumor (his was benign) or a life-threatening issue, Andrew says “everyone has their own trial.”

One of those
people is now his mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This is a
trial that not only afflicts the person with the disease, but also their family
and friends who travel the painful journey of a loss of memories between loved
ones.

This past
year, Andrew Leahey & The Homestead won a battle of the bands contest and
were invited to play on The Rock Boat
– “the world’s largest floating music festival” in February 2019. Prior to
that, Sixthman, the company that runs
The Rock Boat, also invited Andrew to join a handful of other artists on a
songwriting retreat. Twice each day, Andrew was paired with a different artist
for one-on-one songwriting sessions.

“The
penultimate night, I had this idea in my head, and I ended up writing [a song]
alone and it’s about my mom who has Alzheimer’s,” he said. His mother was a
teacher for many years and Andrew recalls that, “She’s the reason I write as a
journalist, she’s the reason that I play music because she put me in lessons
when I was a kid. It’s a bummer – that’s an understatement – to be doing this
thing right now and not be able to share it with her properly.”

For now, the
song “New Memories” can only be found on the Sixthman Sessions album for
those who attended The Rock Boat. “It’s
about her and the process of us continuing to have good times together, but
knowing that to her those memories get washed away.”

Andrew and the other artists in those Sixthman Sessions played a unique show on The Rock Boat that is only open to “veteran” fans who are not on their first Rock Boat experience. Andrew was given the opportunity to play it live for those fans. It was emotional for everyone in attendance.

“Playing it
on The Rock Boat and talking to so many people that came up afterwards who have
had that disease come to their families that was one of the highlights of the
whole trip for me,” said Leahey. “You really realize that music goes beyond
you.”

Whether music
helps bring consolation to people in their trials or helps them experience the
emotions of love and life – it’s clear what Andrew Leahey & The Homestead
are doing with their new album, Airwaves:
they are producing that good ol’ fashioned rock and roll for today’s audiences
who have been waiting for the lights to come on.

To listen to
the full interview, tune into Episode 55 of the Agents of Innovation podcast on

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/andrewleahey/feed/0Aakash Patel Elevates Tampa’s Swaggerhttp://agentsofinnovation.org/aakashpatel/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/aakashpatel/#respondSat, 23 Feb 2019 03:39:45 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4278From the time he was young, Aakash Patel was cheering on Tampa Bay. His first job, at the age of 14, was on the Buccaneers Student Advisory board. For every home game, he was a greeter to fans for the Tampa Bay Bucs. He would literally “high-five” them as they entered the stadium and took the escalator to their seats. Later, as a college student at Florida State University, he was an assistant at the Tampa Bay Times office in Tallahassee.

His family was in the hospitality business and had broken ground on a hotel in 2006, believing it would be a real hot spot. But, after Aakash graduated from FSU and returned to his hometown of Tampa, Florida in 2009, in the midst of a bad recession for the nation and particularly for Florida, his family’s hotel business faced a challenging economic environment. During the next three years, Aakash helped his family grow the business and prepare for the economic turnaround. Their hotel, the Westin Tampa Bay, also featured a few other businesses inside it including their restaurant, Aqua.

While he was helping his family’s hospitality business, some of his friends had begun returning to Tampa and starting businesses. They knew that Aakash was very engaged in the local community and with many organizations and they came seeking advice.

While friends consistently
relied on Aakash’s connections and insight in the Tampa market, the
entrepreneur in him eventually said, “I have to
make this a business.” And so he did.

In February 2012, he started Elevate, Inc. with three clients (all friends). But after helping them with their marketing campaigns, by April he was down to just one client. He looked around for opportunities to continue getting involved in the Tampa Bay community. In 2012, Tampa hosted the Republican National Convention – and Aakash jumped on the opportunity to serve on the host committee. Once again people started coming to him for advice on how they could improve their business opportunities with Tampa in the spotlight. By May of that year, he grew to 8 clients.

Over the past seven years to date, Elevate, Inc. has served over 150
companies. They are a Florida-based strategic business consulting firm
providing public relations, community relations, targeted networking and social
media.

What Elevate offers
companies and clients are networking, social media content, and public
relations including getting good media attention.

“We do it in a way where we physically
take you to different organizations and events and we walk you around the room,”
said Patel. “A lot of public relations firms will tell you what to do, but they
won’t take you and show you what to do.”

Aakash’s passion for Tampa Bay has
extended to Elevate’s business model, which started with a focus on helping
companies who are relocating to Tampa get engaged with the local community.
Over time, it has also morphed into helping companies that are rebranding or
helping entrepreneurs who are starting their own business but can’t afford
their own business development director or marketing director.

Part of Aakash’s unique selling proposition and part of the reason for Elevate’s success is because Aakash has put a lot of personal investment in the Tampa Bay community – this experience and knowledge can now be leveraged to help those seeking to engage in the community. Aakash has been involved in the Tampa Chamber of Commerce, Tampa Public Leadership Institute, Leadership Tampa Bay, and College Leadership Florida. He has served on the host committees for major events held in Tampa, including the 2012 Republican National Committee, the 2014 Indian International Film Academy Awards, and the 2017 National Championship game for college football. We wouldn’t be surprised to see him on the host committee for the upcoming NFL Super Bowl being hosted by Tampa in 2021.

Aakash has been acknowledged for his leadership. In 2017, the Tampa Chamber recognized him with the “Emerging Leader of the Year” award. Then-Governor Rick Scott appointed Aakash as the Chairman of the Early Learning Coalition of Hillsborough County and to Florida’s Early Learning Advisory Council.

Anyone around Tampa’s business and
philanthropic scene knows Aakash Patel is omnipresent (including on Twitter).
But that didn’t happen overnight. After coming back home to Tampa after
college, he started meeting with many business and community leaders.

“I asked a lot of questions to a lot of
people who were smarter than me,” said Patel. And every time he met with
someone, he would ask them: “Give me two more people that I need to know in
this town.” This is how he built his list of people to call on. But his secret
sauce has always been his follow through.

“I think a lot of entrepreneurs are good at the initial conversation but they have a lack of process in following up … I write down everything and I put it in an excel sheet and I look at it every month and I say: did I follow up properly?” This is his personal accountability method.

He has also extended his lean on mentors
by creating an Advisory Board for Elevate, Inc, one which he still has seven
years later.

With much of his Elevate’s work being focused on helping local entrepreneurs, Aakash also took his skills to the local government to help them be more responsive to their constituents and to the business community.

“In 2012 the majority of government
officials in Tampa were not on Twitter,” said Patel. He held sessions for
elected officials and candidates to teach them how to use it and how to find value
in social media platforms for them and for the Tampa Bay community. Now, many
elected officials will call on Aakash and his Elevate team to be at events
because they know they will write blogs and engage with the public through
Facebook Live and Twitter.

When Aakash started Elevate, Inc. seven years ago, Tampa was a Tier 2 city. Businesses started investing more in downtown Tampa. People began moving back here and continue to do so. Companies are moving here for the good business environment and the emerging talent. Across the bay, St. Petersburg is also booming. Tampa International Airport has 20 million visitors each year, with direct international flights to places like London, Germany, Amsterdam, and Panama. The Tampa / St. Petersburg television market is top 12 in the nation and the beaches in St. Petersburg and Clearwater are almost always on the top 10 list, sometimes number one.

There’s a new hotel going up in Tampa
every month this year.

“There are local people here that are
high net worth that invest in start-ups all over the nation,” said Patel. “We
are now seeing high net worth people that live in Tampa invest in companies
with the caveat that they live in
Tampa. And that’s exactly what we need. We need the entrepreneurship ecosystem
to work together.”

Tampa has been known for companies in the hospitality industry, such as Outback, Carrabba’s, and Hooters. The health care industry is booming with Advent Hospital, Tampa General, and the Moffit Cancer Center. Tampa Bay’s educational institutions are rising, with the University of South Florida growing and the USF medical school moving to a new downtown location. Mosaic, a Minnesota-based Fortune 100 company, now has its corporate headquarters in Tampa.

“This is going to be a new city,” said
Patel. “I think what we’ll see in the next four or five years is more Fortune
100 and Fortune 500 companies relocating their companies here.”

And Elevate, Inc, is doing the community engagement work to help entrepreneurs here to thrive and take them to the organizations in the community they need to join and the events they need to be at in order elevate their business. “We are very, very, very, very focused on making sure each client has the attention to detail they deserve,” said Patel. It’s part of why he named his company Elevate. “We are physically taking the client to the next level. So we need to elevate them,” said Patel.

Ever since he was 14, Aakash Patel has
been cheering on Tampa. One day he was high-fiving Bucs fans before they
started their way up that escalator. Today, he’s helping people and entrepreneurs
in Tampa elevate to the top.

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/aakashpatel/feed/0Peter Rex Empowers Entrepreneurs Through Trustworkhttp://agentsofinnovation.org/peter-rex-empowers-entrepreneurs-through-trustwork/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/peter-rex-empowers-entrepreneurs-through-trustwork/#respondSun, 10 Feb 2019 17:42:33 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4252Peter Rex is the founder and CEO of Trustwork and was the guest for Episode 53 of the Agents of Innovation podcast.

“Trustwork is going to be the biggest company in the world,” said Rex.
“Bold statement, but we’re actually poised to do so.”

Trustwork
has begun by “uberizing” real estate services and is soon expanding into a
platform for entrepreneurship where anyone can find and do business on the
Trustwork platform.

A
graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, Peter Rex developed
core elements of Trustwork’s vision while building a $1.5 billion integrated
investment and operations company which now has more than 400 employees, over
$135 million in annual revenue, and $350 million of equity invested. With
offices in Seattle, San Francisco, Tampa Bay, Austin, and Dallas, Trustwork
claims to be “a technology business recreating the global economy and building
the New Land of Opportunity, where the power of the New Economy – including
access to a range of technology, finance, and opportunity – is available to
all.”

To
succeed at building out this platform, Peter spent over 18 months traveling to
85 countries around the world, including more than 200 cities. Although he took
his wife and first child, this wasn’t a pleasure trip. Peter had over 1,000
meetings with local people in all of these cities and came back with 1,600
pages of notes. He met with private equity folks, people who were the owners of
property and businesses. He used his networks from Georgetown, Harvard, Young Presidents Organization, and Tiger 21, to help secure many high-level
meetings.

To prepare for this trip, he and his team of researchers made tons of cold calls. They secured significant meetings all over the place. This trip, has now become “a huge competitive advantage for me,” said Rex. “Now I know I have an edge.”

One of the things he learned is that “the
whole world is kind of so big, but so small,” he said. “There are some things
you just don’t understand until you’re on the ground … to really have a sense
of what it’s like for the entrepreneurs on the ground.”

While Peter was fortunate to have some great networks and some great previous success in business, which has helped with access to people and capital, he wants to ensure that millions of others don’t need to invest that kind of time and resources to acquire these networks in order to succeed. And that’s where the Trustwork platform comes in.

“It’s a platform of entrepreneurship,” said Rex. “The idea behind
Trustwork is to empower people to rise up and live abundantly.” If Trustwork is
successful in their mission, “Everybody who is supposed to be an entrepreneur
can be an entrepreneur by developing their own skills … and really in today’s
economy that’s the only way forward for someone in the workforce. So what this
platform is, it is the new economy. We actually want to be the world’s largest
economy … an economy that is larger than the United States.”

“Working people everywhere need a new land of opportunity,” said Rex.
“I see things as GLOCAL – meaning global and local.” Peter has put in the
effort of going around the globe to learn about hundreds of local economies
first hand. He has done the groundwork to help “turn on the spickets for
capital” for working people everywhere. Trustwork is building a platform to
help working people build their profile and launch their own businesses.

As Peter Rex first started out in business, he started trying to learn the things he didn’t know. He didn’t have the networks – so he went to Harvard law school, to build his networks. He didn’t have the capital, so he used his networks to find capital. But when you’re just starting out in business, you often times have to find your own success before others start investing in you.

As he started building out his first company, he started realizing all
the things he didn’t know and went out to get them. Through this process, he
came to believe he could help others through a new business model that
eventually led him to building Trustwork.

“I started realizing I could build a platform that allows people to
plug in, make their reputation known so if they’re excellent they could do it
on merit – not if they went to some school or not – they could base it on
merit, which is what it should be about anyways; and they can access capital.”

“The most important thing, first thing in business for anything to
work, is trust,” said Rex. “There needs to be some kind of basis for engagement
in commerce – and in order for that to exist you need to have some either trust
in the person you’re dealing with … or you trust an intermediary that’s in
between you.”

That’s what the Trustwork platform does for working people everywhere
and it’s also why ne named the company Trustwork. “Trust is the first thing in
business. That’s the bottom line. And the second word is work: and that’s what
our focus is: making people productive, empowering them.”

Many web-based platforms, like Facebook as one example, make money off
of distracting people, keeping them on their site as long as possible, to
generate ad revenue for more eyeball time. Trustwork is taking the opposite
approach.

“We are actually going to make money on making people productive,”
said Rex. “Our approach is actually that your eyeball is not on that screen too
long … it’s really the opposite of a Facebook kind of approach.”

But Peter Rex didn’t start his own mission in life as wanting to be a
businessman. In fact, he was raised with a negative view of business people and
profit-seekers. As an undergrad he majored in philosophy and political
philosophy at Georgetown University. He even went to a monastery, but through
his own prayer, he kept having this calling to go into business. He felt very
uncomfortable with it, until he talked to another priest who encouraged him to
follow his calling. He came to the realization that he could do good works
through business.

“Business is one of the fastest moving things today,” said Rex. He has
already created hundreds of jobs through his real estate ventures. And now,
with Trustwork, he is building a platform that is “trying to help that
individual that’s trying to move up and they’re struggling.” Access to
networks, capital, and software are the types of things that entrepreneurs need
but often times struggle to find. But now those three things move globally and
the platform that Trustwork has created is giving them access to these
essential elements of building their business where they are locally.

While in college at Georgetown, he often volunteered with Mother
Teresa’s Sisters, who served some of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington
DC. The Sisters instilled in him a belief of serving the individual in front of
you, with the motto of “Serving Jesus and the Poor.” He has turned it into
“Serving People in Business” (or for him personally, “Serving Jesus in
Business.”)

He knows that while business and capitalism create jobs and have
uplifted millions of people from poverty, that “business has its limitations.
You can’t get to the poor through business – directly. You can affect it
indirectly. But directly you can’t get to it,” said Rex. That’s why he has
stayed dedicated to private philanthropy by creating the Make Rise Foundation,
as a complement to what he’s doing on the business side. “We have to make sure
we are doing something in addition to business as well,” said Rex.

Today, he has 20,000 users on the Trustwork platform, but over the
course of the next three to seven years, he projects that millions of people
will be running their entrepreneurial ventures on the Trustwork platform.

He is using Trustwork himself to back some companies on the platform as “proof of concept.” But other people are running their companies on the Trustwork platform, “building their reputational information that can turn into entrepreneurial power for you in the future,” said Rex.

“Entrepreneurship is about passion if you’re going to be successful,” he said. “Of the most important things,” for an entrepreneur, “I put love at the top… because you have to love what you’re doing, you have to love who you serve, and I think you should love who you work with as well.”

“Being an entrepreneur is being an artist – because it’s about creativity,”
said Rex. “In our nature, we’re creators. We’re created in the image of God …
if that is the case, then we would reflect this in some way. When we are
creating, we most reflect that creative nature … everyone is called to do
that.”

And for Peter Rex, Trustwork has now become his avenue for empowering the creative spirit of millions of entrepreneurs and uplifting people across the globe in the process.

Peter Rex is based in Seattle, where he lives with his wife and three children. To learn more about him and his work, visit: Trustwork.com. To listen to the full interview, tune into Episode 53 of the Agents of Innovation podcast on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or SoundCloud. You can also follow the podcast on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. We welcome your comments below!

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/peter-rex-empowers-entrepreneurs-through-trustwork/feed/0J.B. Simmons Twists the Plot of His Careerhttp://agentsofinnovation.org/jbsimmons/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/jbsimmons/#respondSat, 19 Jan 2019 17:34:12 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4221J.B. Simmons is a lawyer-turned-author but not quite in the
mold of John Grisham, who has come to define the legal thrillers. J.B. writes fiction
beyond the legal world. His books “tackle hard questions and turn them into
page-turners.” He bills them as “smart stories” with “epic ideas.” And he has
gained fans the world over and was a guest on Episode 52 of the Agents of
Innovation podcast.

A graduate of UVA law school, J.B. Simmons embarked on a
legal career at a boutique law firm in Washington, DC. He traveled the world, suing
foreign governments, and certainly collecting plenty of stories. With a wife
and three kids, you’d think that might keep him busy enough. But something kept
churning in Simmons’ mind. He had a passion to be a writer. After all, that’s
partly why he went to law school in the first place.

While an undergrad at the University of North Carolina, in
his native state, a college professor recommended that if he wanted to become a
writer he should go to law school. After all, writing is something lawyers do
quite a bit of. The idea intrigued him and off he went. But law school usually
leads to being a lawyer and so it did with him.

However, about seven years ago, he found a way to start pursuing
his passion to write books. “There’s something about storytelling and writing
that is so critical in the legal field that plays pretty nicely when you start
trying to write novels,” said Simmons.

Like millions of other readers, he was “caught up in the
wave of young adult fiction in the past 10 or 15 years.” Series like Harry
Potter and The Hunger Games had become “culture-defining books.” He found that these
“books read by young adults would go on to be read by people of all ages,” and “what’s
compelling about those books is they really capture your attention.”

While he wanted to write, the only time he found in his schedule
between his legal career and raising a family was to turn from being a night
owl into waking up early – as in 5:00 AM. He did this daily for years. He would
write for a couple hours in the morning before his kids were waking up and
before the demands of his real job set in.

“One of the things I liked about those early morning hours
is it’s a time when you can focus without interruption and do the work that’s important
to you before the distractions and the hustle and bustle of the day starts,”
said Simmons. “It is such precious time. Your mind is clear. Your focus can
really hone in on the project you are doing and then when you finish, say 6:30
or 7 [in the morning], you feel like you’ve already established your place for
the day. You’ve done important work already and anything done after that is
just bonus.”

But what happens when the writing is going good on any
particular morning and he has to shut it off to get to the demands of the day?
J.B. Simmons reminded us of a quote he once read by Ernest Hemmingway: “Every
day I try to quit while I’m going good.”

Then he told us that what he thinks Hemmingway meant by that
was this: “You don’t have to completely exhaust your creative supply and your output
of words every single day and, in fact, it can be helpful some days to finish –
in the middle – when you know what’s coming next. You have it already in your
mind. So, when you come and sit down the next day you know where to start, you
know where you’re going.”

He seems to have done alright. When he first started looking at getting his works published, Simmons found advice from another entrepreneur-turned-author who had done work as a start-up author and publisher. In the book, Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki talked about how entrepreneurial authors could navigate around the traditional gatekeepers of the publishing world and go directly to readers.

Around the same time, J.B. Simmons said, “I whas seeing something very innovative in the marketplace – that people were starting to buy books in only one place and that place was Amazon.”

As a fiction writer, J.B.’s works also have some really nice
cover art. Where did he find such artists to design that? He put out a bid
through 99Designs.com. He received somewhere
between 100-200 possible book covers. He sent some of the ones he was considering
out to some of his most avid readers and fans and asked them to vote and give
feedback about what they liked. He found that crowdsourcing things like this
was a good marketing strategy that has helped in his own success.

Publishing houses used to have a “monopoly on this talent,” he
said. But now, anyone can find quality designers “without breaking the bank.”

“I was finding that the more I wrote, the more I wanted to
write,” said Simmons. Readers were devouring
his books and asking about when the next one would be out. But he was writing
these books while practicing law, traveling around the world for work, and
raising a family back at home in northern Virginia. All of this took time away
from his family. With all this to consider, he decided to hang up the legal
career in early 2018 and put his full-time effort into writing. He was also
more than thrilled when he discovered that his colleagues at the law firm were
very encouraging, which gave him comfort in his decision.

“People love to see others pursuing their dreams,” he said. “I
think it emboldens them about their own lives and the kind of dreams they’re pursuing.”

Now over six months into this new life as a full-time
writer, he has found that he has to be more disciplined with his time. “I think
time has a capacity to fill up no matter what you’re doing,” said Simmons. “What
I found is that it takes even more focus and daily emphasis on routine and
habits to make sure I’m using this newfound time to write as much as I can.”

In addition to writing books and blogging at JBSimmons.com, he also can now spend more
of his time on marketing and publications, emailing with fans, responding to
social media, and reading – including reading about the writing and publishing
industry. But the main task is putting out good writing and good content and he
recognizes that “I have to be a little more on guard than I used to be” when it
comes to his time.

There is a lot on the horizon for J.B. Simmons and his fans.
One of his books is currently in the very early stages of production to possibly
be turned into a film. As part of his “Five-Tower series,” he’s
working on a sequel to The Blue
Tower, which is due out in 2019. In addition, he’s working on a
different kind of book, The Treaty Room,
which is a thriller that involves international politics, espionage, and
intrigue – perhaps with some elaborated stories from his days as a lawyer suing
foreign governments. Whatever does come next for J.B. Simmons, we know the plot
will continue to thicken.

To learn more about J.B. Simmons and his
work, visit: jbsimmons.com. To listen
to the full interview with J.B. Simmons, tune into Episode 52 of the Agents of
Innovation podcast on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. You can also follow the podcast on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. We welcome your comments below!

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/jbsimmons/feed/0Michael Gibson Lights the Paper Belt on Firehttp://agentsofinnovation.org/michael-gibson-lights-the-paper-belt-on-fire/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/michael-gibson-lights-the-paper-belt-on-fire/#respondWed, 26 Dec 2018 02:48:38 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4185Michael Gibson’s first job as a child was as a paperboy in Greenwhich, Connecticut. Today, from the technology start-up corridor of San Francisco, he claims that he is “dedicated to lighting the paper belt on fire.” We had him on Episode 51 of the Agents of Innovation podcast to explain just exactly what he is up to.

As he states in his LinkedIn profile: “If the rust belt has come to define the hollowed out industries of the Midwest, in the next ten years the paper belt will come to define the paper-based industries from Washington DC to Boston. In DC, they print money, visas, and laws on paper. In Delaware, companies incorporate on paper. In NYC, they print media on paper. And in Boston Harvard and MIT print diplomas on paper.”

Back in 1517, Martin Luther also led a revolution against paper. In his times, he was protesting against indulgences sold by the Catholic Church – in which you could save your soul by donating money to the church and receiving a paper-based indulgence. Those “get out of hell” cards weren’t free. Martin Luther saw an injustice and he wrote up his 95 theses and posted them on the church doors.

Today, Michael Gibson points to places like Uber and Bitcoin which have “allowed people to opt out of that old system – the paper-based system – and into something new.” He adds, “The kind of innovation I want to work on myself is where people get to opt out of old systems and into new ones that are demonstrably better.”

Over the past decade he has involved himself in the revolution against higher-education. “There’s something insidious about how this system entrenches the power in the status quo,” said Gibson.

As part of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s Protestant Reformation, Gibson wrote up a 95 Theses against higher education called “The New 95.” This was an extension of his work at the 1517 Fund, which invests in start-up ventures by young people who did not go to college.

Students at the University of Illinois post “The New 95” theses on a prominent statue on their campus.

If this concept sounds familiar, it’s because Gibson previously worked for entrepreneur and PayPal co-founder and philanthropist Peter Thiel, who with the Founders Fund (previously named the Thiel Fund) distributes grants of $100,000 each to about 20 young people each year under 19 years old (recently extended to those up to age 22). From 2010-2015, Gibson was the Vice President for Grants for the Thiel Foundation. He also taught a class on philosophy and technology with Thiel at Stanford Law School.

Gibson didn’t come to this work in a traditional way. After graduating from New York University and attending Oxford to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, he had a “crisis of faith” and decided he didn’t need to have a degree to become a writer. While he admired nonfiction writers like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, he found his way writing for the magazine, Technology Review. One day he was interviewing one of the members of the “PayPal mafia, Max Levchin, who later introduced him to Peter Thiel.

In 2015, Gibson took the concept of the Founders Fund (a nonprofit) and developed a for-profit venture capital fund that invests in young entrepreneurs who did not go to college (rather than give them grants, as the Founders Fund does). This gives those at the 1517 Fund a real stake in the companies they are investing in.

Both Thiel and Gibson do not believe any of these young people need a college diploma to be successful. “There are a large number of tech start-ups over the years founded by younger people,” said Gibson. “The traits that succeed out there in starting companies from scratch aren’t book smarts. It’s grit, perseverance.”

“If we want innovation – truly new things – then we have to ask why some markets are innovative and others aren’t,” said Gibson. “And it’s not just competition that drives things to get better, it’s also the threat of new entry because if you can create something new – that’s different – without the approval of anyone, then that’s how you can experiment and be inventive.”

Michael Gibson is indeed dedicated to lighting the paper belt on fire. And that’s why we think he’s a truly remarkable agent of innovation. He’s challenging the status quo to bring us a world that transforms the one we’re living in.

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/michael-gibson-lights-the-paper-belt-on-fire/feed/0Patrick Franks Talks Trashhttp://agentsofinnovation.org/patrickfranks/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/patrickfranks/#respondFri, 16 Nov 2018 02:36:29 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4169Patrick Franks joined us on the Agents of Innovation podcast to talk trash. As the co-founder and co-owner of Go Doorstep, Patrick and his team get hired by apartment communities to pick up trash and take it to the dumpster on-site. For that added amenity, residents of such apartment communities pay a monthly fee as part of their lease terms and the apartment communities pay Go Doorstep for this service. It’s almost as simple as that.

Go Doorstep services many apartment communities in the sprawling metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia. In most communities, the residents can choose to do this any one of the five nights a week that a Go Doorstep representative comes to perform this service.

The apartment community also makes a little income out of the deal because they pass on this garbage pick-up expense to their residents – that extra income hits their bottom line: some use it to pay for any range of items: perhaps applying it to waste management to come pick up the garbage from the dumpster, or for pest control, or to offer bonuses to their employees. It also helps increase property value.

“Every dollar they spend using our program creates five dollars of value when they go to sell the property,” said Franks.

There are 17 million apartment units in the United States today – these include high-rises which tend to be in central business districts to small and mid-rise properties, which tend to be more in the suburban area. And, to fulfill the demand for new apartment homes, there will need to be 3.4 million new apartment units by 2030. A lot of those are going to happen in the Sunbelt, including the Southeast where people are moving for warm weather, lower taxes, and better economic opportunities.

“Real estate is a very central part of the business community in Atlanta,” said Franks. Go Doorstep services properties ranging from as small as 125 units to as large as 500 units, but most of the properties they service – in every direction all over the Atlanta metro area – average 250-300 units. This is “part of the reason why this business works: we just get one check from the property,” said Franks.

Go Doorstep launched in January 2015. Today it has about fifty employees. Some work in operations and sales, but the vast majority are part-timers (who range from 25 to 50 years old). Most of those part-time employees have other full-time day jobs and simply work 5-10 hours a week in the evenings for Go Doorstep. Starting pay is pretty good and it’s a way for them to earn extra income.

“It’s pretty cool to provide an opportunity for those people,” said Franks. He also believes Go Doorstep offers “a virtuous and beneficial business model.”

“Really, everyone is winning in the entire chain in all the relationships that happen. Residents save time. Owners make money and keep their community looking nice. Our employees make extra income that is not that big of a time commitment for them to make extra money, ” said Franks. “And that’s really how a business should be – it should be a win-win for customers, employees, partners, investors.”

Franks wasn’t always in this business. In fact a decade ago, he was working in politics right out of college. He worked for elected officials, think tanks, and nonprofits before joining Rubicon Global, an asset provider of waste and recycling solutions for large distribution companies, such as fast food chains and grocery stores, with many locations in different states.

“The transition from politics to trash was kind of a natural one – and this is a much cleaner way to make a living than politics,” Franks quipped.

But he also had a philosophical change about working on the backs of taxpayers or donors to creating value and earning profits himself.

“One of the problems that I had about working in politics is that ultimately my paycheck came from taxpayer money,” he said. “Working in the nonprofit world, your funding is coming from wealthy folks who have gone on and done really well and had a surplus to donate to a cause they believe in and care about.”

“I just thought it would be good if I went out and I worked in the private sector and created value and created income and hopefully be able to support other people and causes that I care about.”

However, he has learned some things in the process. Owning a business doesn’t mean you’re your own boss or that you’re wealthy. “The reality is when you run a business – you go from having one boss to having lots of bosses: you have customers, partners, investors, bankers, vendors, employees … you answer to a lot of people,” said Franks. And, “as the owner, you’re kind of the last one to get paid.”

While Franks performs a lot of functions for the company – including sometimes pitching in on doing a trash removal when there isn’t another employee to do it that day – he talked to us about some of the responsibilities that fall solely to the owner of the company.

“As the owner of the company, there are 3 things that only you can do: setting a vision for the company, making sure there’s enough money in the bank to pay the bills, and allocating the financial and human capital.”

And for Franks it really comes down to the following mission: “How do I support my operations guys, how do we invest that money, and how do we keep our customers happy?”

“I have to keep my employees happy because if I don’t keep my employees happy than my current customers aren’t happy,” said Franks.” And if I don’t keep my current customers happy we lose business, which hurts. You can’t get new customers unless you have good reference-able customers,” he said. “I find if you really take care of your current customers, the rest kind of takes care of itself.”

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/patrickfranks/feed/0Nathan Edmondson Brings Heroes to Lifehttp://agentsofinnovation.org/nathan-edmondson-brings-heroes-to-life/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/nathan-edmondson-brings-heroes-to-life/#respondThu, 04 Oct 2018 02:46:21 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4147Nathan Edmondson is an American writer, known especially for his comic series, Who is Jake Ellis? and The Activity. He’s written for Image Comics and for Marvel Comics, including working on series that include The Punisher, and Ultimate Iron Man. As a guest on Episode 49 of the Agents of Innovation podcast, Nathan talked to us about his rise as an author in the comic book industry, as well as how he is bringing some of his comic books to the big screen, with A-List actors, and the philanthropic project he is working on now with EDGE, the Ecological Defense Group, to fight poachers in Africa.

For Edmondson, “writing is something that goes back to early grade school.” Throughout high school, college, and as he got into another career – in international politics – right after college, he kept having “this itch to write.”

As a high school student from Augusta, Georgia, he brought many of his short stories to a professor named Bill Sessions. Professor Sessions personally knew and worked with great writers such as Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Ernest Hemmingway. Sessions gave Edmondson some key advice as he began to make his way in the world: Go learn what to write about; figure out the world and then you can figure out the writing.

In 2009, Edmondson came out with his first comic book series, Olympus. It was an adventure sci-fi series that was picked up by IMAGE publishing house. It quickly got some television and film interest.

“A year before that, if you had asked me, I don’t think I would have ever said I’m going to be a comic book writer,” said Edmondson.

A Mercer University graduate, Edmondson has lived in Europe, Washington, DC, and currently makes his home in the Los Angeles area.

Even though Edmondson has a degree in art and art history, he doesn’t participate in the illustration of the comics. But he loves seeing how other artists envision his characters and make them come alive on the page.

“There is a joy I found getting into comics that is like instant gratification because you immediately see your idea realized in really fantastic fashion and in ways that you never anticipated,” said Edmondson. “It’s a surprise. Every piece of art, every page that comes in. It’s a surprise because you projected it one way by writing it – it lived in your mind. And then you hand it over and it comes to life in someone else’s mind and they bring it to life – give it life on paper, on the page. And to see that: it’s a real drug – especially if you’re an art lover.”

He also believes that “there’s nowhere else in the world that art thrives like it does in the comics industry, where artists can work and get paid for their work and thrive.”

He has three comics in early stage of movie production that he has sold to filmmakers. All will include A-list actors as his stories are brought to the big screen. Just as he was excited to see artists take his stories and provide drawings for comic books, he’s also just as excited to see how they are adapted to cinema.

Ken Nolan, who is famous for the film Black Hawk Down, has already adapted his comic book, The Activity, into a screenplay.

With a wife and two kids, Edmondson still finds himself with free time and he has used that time towards philanthropic projects, including one that came to him through a visit on safari in South Africa. “This trip of a lifetime became a calling,” he said.

While he was working with some guys in the military community, he found out about some things being done in the counter-poaching arena in Kruger National Park in South Africa. His first thought was to do a docuseries on it.

He wrote an article about one of his experiences there called “The Lions of Kuger.” Through his experience with this group of counter poachers, Edmondson was involved in night vision training, tracks, solutions for K9 programs, and suddenly found himself as part of a team to stop poachers of wild game in Africa.

“As part of a team, I just did what I do – just kind of start to spout ideas,” said Edmondson. They wanted to put together a nonprofit to carry on the project and he found himself involved with funding and designing programs, including ways to get donors directly involved with various projects.

They created EDGE – Eco-Defense Group. And now Edmondson spends more of his time time working on this than anything else, including his writing – which has taken a backseat.

They have designed an innovative philanthropic program where 95 cents out of every dollar goes to a project. There is little overhead and there is a diversity in projects that fits the donor’s interest. “We were formed out of need and the passion came afterward,” said Edmondson. He gives donors experiences “behind the scenes” in ways no tourist could do to invest them in becoming part of the solution for solving the crisis.

They will also soon be bringing some of the counter-poaching rangers to train on U.S. soil for the first time.

“We are making history … we have access to areas that are literally the front lines of the poaching wars in all of Africa, where the greatest species decimation and also the greatest population by diversity and the greatest speciation exists and is in need of defense.”

“I want my kids to experience this and experience these animals alive and in the wild. No zoo can compare to seeing these animals thriving in their territory,” said Edmondson. “Our birthright, in part, as stewards of this planet is to be stewards of these animals,” he said. “Poaching animals is something upon which we will be radically judged … exploiting those animals for gain is a hard thing to tolerate once you see how people live in harmony with them.”

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/nathan-edmondson-brings-heroes-to-life/feed/0Matt and Joe Build Strategic Digital Services Into An Agency “Of Record”http://agentsofinnovation.org/matt-and-joe-build-strategic-digital-services-into-an-agency-of-record/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/matt-and-joe-build-strategic-digital-services-into-an-agency-of-record/#respondSun, 16 Sep 2018 22:34:21 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4125In 2014, Matthew Farrar and Joe Clements founded Strategic Digital Services (SDS), a digital-only marketing firm. While many marketing or advertising firms spend time on print, television, and radio for their clients, SDS focuses on its strengths: digital media. For those looking to build or enhance their website, social media, or general presence online, SDS provides these services. In fact, not only do they specialize in digital media, that’s all they do.

If you’re a business, you’re going to naturally do what makes you the most money. For many marketing firms that means television. Large agencies place a buy and their work is over.

“What happens when you hire a traditional agency that does everything?,” asked Clements. “They are going to optimize for the thing that they’re best at and the thing they are best at is the thing they make the most money at, which is almost always going to be TV buying. We don’t say that there’s not a role for TV. TV is a significant part still of the American media diet. But it is now the minority part of the American media diet.”

People are watching less television today than in years past, largely thanks to the internet. So, there has been an increasing move over to reaching people in digital spaces. With digital marketing, firms like SDS are going to produce dozens (if not hundreds) of pieces of content. They then adjust the buy on how t it’s performing, which makes digital marketing more accountable than a TV buy. The cost of digital is much less expensive than any other form of marketing.

Coming from backgrounds in the legislative process in Florida’s capital city of Tallahassee, Matt and Joe began with a large portion of their clients in the political space. While that is still a majority of their work, they now also work with clients in the corporate, advocacy, and nonprofit spaces. In addition to Matt and Joe, SDS currently includes 7 other people, all based in Tallahassee. However, Matt and Joe spend a lot of time on the road and when they can’t be with their clients in person they also utilize FaceTime with them.

When they began their business, they were fortunate to be a part of a new start-up incubator in Tallahassee, Domi Station. As their business grew, they found their own office space. And recently, they just outfitted one of their offices into a podcast studio, for their soon-to-release podcast, “On Record,” which is intended to look at marketing industry as a whole, especially digital. But they will also give out advice to listeners – providing real solutions they would give to real clients. While that “free advice” that people would pay hundreds of dollars for is being provided on the podcast, it’s also a way for Matt and Joe to build the brand of SDS.

Joe Clements

“If you start a business you should be doing anything but working on it,” said Clements. “It’s like saying if you have a baby that you should be doing anything but taking care of the baby the first few month of it’s life. If you started a business and you’re worried about how much spare time you’re going to have: don’t start a business. You’ll lose. You’ll get beat by someone who’s willing to spend 14 hours a day on it.”

They have continue to grow strong over the past four years. “We were dumb enough to take the chance and dumb enough to stick with it,” said Farrar. “There’s a huge number of businesses that close in their first couple of years. We could have been one of them.”

“When you start, everyone expects that you’re going to fail. They won’t say it to your face,” said Clements. He added that it probably takes a business about two years to take you’re first step. “I think we’re at level two now,” said Clements. “I think level three is building a brand that is beyond Matt and I.” Their annual business is currently in the $2-3 million range. Their goal is to someday be in the $50-100 million of annual business.

Matthew Farrar

“One thing we really focus on is culture in the company,” said Farrar. “We focus a lot on trying to keep employees as long as we can, trying to keep them happy … but also giving them responsibility, giving them the ability to work on projects that they can be passionate about, and that’s been a huge part of why the company has grown and why we have a good chance as growing further.”

One of the other ways they build their brand is through their video work. They document almost everything they do. “We try to document whether we’re in the office, whether we’re on the road, to try and tell the story of how hard we work for our clients, why we work for our clients, and what it is that we do to earn our living,” said Farrar.

They will typically recommend to their clients that 40-60% of their paid media budget goes towards digital and they optimize where their client’s audience is. They’ll use a range of Facbook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, as well as email marketing.

“Facebook is like the network TV of America right now,” said Clement. “Everyone is there. They may not be there a lot, but they are there.” But the second best way to reach people online is still through email and they will spend a lot of time with clients building email lists. However they also point out that content velocity is higher now than ever before, so the quality of content their clients put out must continue to be high.

]]>http://agentsofinnovation.org/matt-and-joe-build-strategic-digital-services-into-an-agency-of-record/feed/0Matthew Fowler Invests in a Career in Music Over Collegehttp://agentsofinnovation.org/matthew-fowler-invests-in-a-career-in-music-over-college/
http://agentsofinnovation.org/matthew-fowler-invests-in-a-career-in-music-over-college/#respondSat, 25 Aug 2018 22:00:54 +0000http://agentsofinnovation.org/?p=4105At the age of 19, Matthew Fowler put out his first album, “Beginning.” This was a compilation of songs he wrote starting at the age of 14, when his parents bought him his first guitar.

“By the time I was 15, I was pretty sure [a career in music] is what I wanted to do,” says Fowler, who is now 24 years old.

Growing up in Orlando, he was raised by an entrepreneurial father, who had a fine dining establishment called “Journeys” in Orlando. When Matt was 13, he started working in the restaurant as bus boy. Being that it was a fine dining restaurant with high-end clientele, he had to carry himself with an air of legitimacy. He also learned how to present himself to people and how to talk to adults at a young age. He learned a hard work ethic, working Friday nights, Saturday, and Sunday brunches.

Matt’s dad was a chef who had converted a storage unit into a kitchen for catering. At night, Matthew would set up the kitchen as a recording studio and kept playing and recording until he liked the way it came out. That’s where he recorded his first album, where he sang, played guitar, and harmonica, while other friends sang back up and performed other instruments, including the bass. “It’s what makes it sound true. There were no frills on that. It was just a couple of us in the room playing instruments together.”

After high school, he completed about three-fifths of his A.A. degree at a community college. His parents weren’t very well off, so he didn’t have a lot of money to go to college.

“I wasn’t sure about college. It’s a big investment and I didn’t think I was at a point where I wanted to make that investment. And I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do necessarily,” said Fowler. “I always thought music was wonderful and I felt like I didn’t need a degree to do the things that I wanted to do with music.”

“I think a lot of people in college could be doing a lot more for themselves. I just see a lot of people going to college because it’s the “next step” – and that to me is a mistake. I think people should go to college if they know what they’re looking for because it’s expensive and it’s a time commitment,” said Fowler. “I see a lot of people not working as hard as they could sometimes.”

He learned a lot of his entrepreneurial skills from his dad, who told him if he was going to pursue music, not to simply do it as a hobby, but to “make it a career.” So, he created a plan.

“Like anything, being a musician is like owning a small business. You invest in it. You try to find the people that know what they’re doing the best in it – and hire them.”

While Matt had an album, he had very little experience in the music industry. The first thing he did was fin a manager, Steve Foxbury (of the 90s band, “My Friend Steve”). Steve was both a source of encouragement and challenged Matt to become better. They then worked together to find a PR company he could work with and afford. He then went on tour all over the country and opened for many acts, as a singer-songwriter, where he found receptive audiences.

“I think people like to see someone young going for something that they believe in,” said Fowler. “It got me step closer to being what I would call a legitimate touring musician and a legitimate songwriter.”

Early one, one of his biggest challenges was getting shows. He counted that as a musician, “you’re trying to expand but no one knows who you are outside of your circle. You’re taking a risk, but the person booking the show (the venue) is taking a risk too.”

“The booking process is very long and arduous – it’s like just a bunch of email all the time,” said Fowler. “That aspect of it is not my favorite part of it – but it’s like anything, the administrative part, it’s gotta be done. Every job has that part. Getting that initial booking – or meeting – is just the hardest part. You’re trying to convince somebody half way across the country that you’re a financially sound investment … You’ve never been there and they’ve never met you before or heard you play live – it’s a weird, weird thing … As time goes on, it gets better and better – you establish markets, you play at the same places over and over again.”

Matt reminded us that, “there’s an unrealistic pop culture view of a musician lifestyle. I don’t think people realize how much work [being a musician] is … I don’t party at all. I work a lot.”

Two years ago, he moved to Gainesville. Around the same time he moved there, a new venue was opening around the same time, Heartwood Sound Stage, which is a listening room with a 150-seat theater and the venue is often used to film shows. Matt became the de facto manager, where he learned to do video work, audio work, and camera work. He learned the skills of managing a music venue, including talking to bands, booking bands, ajd setting up shows.

“I wasn’t playing a lot, but I was learning a lot,” he says. These skills have now made him a lot more effective on the road with cameras, videos, photos. He knows the technical side of how things work, which has also helped him book shows as well as create great content that he is able to put online as he builds his fan base.

“When I was younger, I didn’t realize how long things took, how long it takes. I’ve grown a little bit since then and I’ve worked a lot since then,” says Fowler. “The common phrase is that it takes ten years to create an overnight success in the music industry and that’s true. There’s a lot of work that gotta be done. I’m not shying away from that. I’m excited about that.”

“It just takes time and persistence and you get better at your craft and you get better at everything. I think people throw the towel in a little bit early because it is difficult. Having a career in anything takes ten years … it takes time where you want to go and that’s a big investment and you have to be willing to put that investment in.”

Matt decided taking on a music career was more important than college. But he also feels fortunate that he learned what he wanted to do earlier than most people do. “I feel like I’m pretty lucky to know what I’m passionate about and what I want to work towards and I think a lot of people spend a lot of years searching for that,” says Fowler.

Since that first album he put out five years ago, he also has an EP and is working on a second full album. But he’s taking his time with the writing and production, as he’s working towards having this second album put him a little more on the map.

In the meantime, Matt is all over the map. With his friends, the Prado Sisters, he is currently on a national tour with 40+ shows from coast-to-coast. For those wanting to catch him on tour or simply download some of his music, you can visit MatthewFowlerMusic.com.